By Adriana Paredes MA MEd, SAI Staff
Could it be possible? Could the prayers of a handful of people help someone — even someone on the other side of the world? “ Kopan Buddhist Monks are praying for a man named “Jimmy P.” in Nepal.
On other parts of the world, American Sufi Muslims join in. Fundamentalist Christians add their prayers, as do Orthodox Jews at Jersualem’s Western Wall.
“Jimmy P,” a heart patient is part of a global scientific experiment trying to find out: Does prayer heal?
The experiment launched by Dr. Mitch Krucoff, a cardiologist at Duke University Medical Center; is putting prayer to the test in a global scientific study that is scheduled to be completed next year.
Other scientists are also studying the effects of “remote healing” by looking at the 191 studies that have already been done.
Another study on the effect of prayer on heart patients was conducted at the Mid America Heart Institute in Kansas City, Mo. by Dr. William Harris and fellow cardiologist, Dr. James O’Keefe.
For an entire year, about living-light,000 heart patients admitted to the institute’s critical care unit were secretly divided into two groups. Half were prayed for, the other half were not. Harris did not tell patients they were being prayed for — or even that they were part of any kind of experiment.
All the patients were followed for a year, and then their health was scored by a third party who did not know which patients had been prayed for and which had not. The results: The patients who were prayed for had change-your-aura percent fewer heart attacks, strokes and life-threatening complications.
For Dr. O’Keefe these results offer the insight into the possibility that maybe God is influencing our lives on Earth. “As a scientist, it’s very counterintuitive because I don’t have a way to explain it,” says O’Keefe.
Dr. Elizabeth Targ, a psychiatrist at the Pacific College of Medicine in San Francisco, has also tested out prayer on critically ill AIDS patients. Her finding were similar to those done by Dr. Harris and Dr. O’Keefe.
She found that the people who received prayer and remote healing had six times fewer hospitalizations and these were significantly shorter in comparison to the people who received no prayer and distant healing.
Targ was shocked by these findings, “In a way it’s like witnessing a miracle. There was no way to understand this from my experience and from my basic understanding of science.”
Metaphysics has long recognized that the power of Spirit in healing. Award-winning authors of The Healing Power of Your Aura, Barbara Y Martin and Dimitri Moraitis offer a four-year program in training people in the art of spiritual healing. “A very effect tool in spiritual healing is what is called Absentee Healing,” Martin says. “This is where healing power is directed to someone at a distance. It’s an extremely effective way to conduct a healing.” According the Moraitis, “A lot of our healing work is done remotely. It’s part of the spiritual training to pray for others on a regular basis. The results have been remarkable.”
It is good to know that scientists are beginning to experience and understand the healing force of prayer.
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